


Reparations

by todisturbtheuniverse



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Fluff, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-22
Updated: 2017-06-22
Packaged: 2018-11-17 05:50:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11269233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/todisturbtheuniverse/pseuds/todisturbtheuniverse
Summary: While hunkering down in the mansion on their first night in the Shadowfell, Scanlan and Grog start to repair their friendship.





	Reparations

**Author's Note:**

> I’m sure (rather, I hope) that we’ll get lots of these little moments of friendships being repaired between Scanlan and the group, and they’ll be excellent, but I wanted to sneak my own idea in before tomorrow’s episode airs.

Even in the Shadowfell, Grog has to practice.

At least he has a Lionel-free sandpit to practice in. No one to watch him all keen while he sounds out words and spells them out loud and traces their letters out on the parchment. And he found a nice flat shield in the corner to put his parchment on, too, so it doesn't get sand on it.

Reading's easier than the writing part. He can kind of guess at the reading, especially if he says it out loud. But even though Percy and Tary put together a special quill for him after he broke a dozen ordinary ones, even though he goes slow and careful to make the shapes, he's just bad at the writing. Pike says that it'll get easier with time, and he _believes_ her, but in the middle of practicing, he's always angry and frustrated that so many things take _time_.

He's angry and frustrated about lots of things. He needs to find something to squish. Hopefully tomorrow.

 _We killed_ , he's written so far. He adjusts the quill in his fingers—fingers better-suited to holding swords and hammers and things that are the correct size, that match him—and puts it back to the parchment. The ink comes out of the quill itself, another smart thing that smart people like Percy and Tary can come up with. Easier than dipping it in an ink pot, which probably wouldn't survive the bag of holding, anyway.

 _some_ , he continues. He likes the letter _o_ best. Easy to make. He admires the way it looks on the parchment, like some school-fresh kid wrote it.

"What's that, Grog?"

He doesn't smash the carefully-constructed quill, just barely. The hand holding down the left side of the parchment nearly crumples the whole thing, though. He hastily smooths out the corner. He only has so much parchment. He doesn't know how long they'll be in this…place.

Maybe Scanlan's gotten quieter while he was away. Or maybe Grog's gotten dumber, or deafer, or something, so that Scanlan can sneak up on him easy-peasy and judge the shape of his letters, which, aside from the _o_ s, still look like something scratched out in the mud by a chicken.

"Nothing," he grunts. He imagines, though, that piece of parchment that Pike read so smoothly while he was too nervous to. If the fight hadn't thrown him off so bad, he'd have taken it, easy as anything, and read it out right there. That would've showed Scanlan.

In worse moments, he thinks that maybe he'd have ripped it up to pieces without reading it once, instead. Doesn't need to prove himself to _anybody_.

He starts to fold the parchment. Scanlan sits down beside him in the sand, digging his feet into it.

"Shouldn't you be resting up for tomorrow?" Grog says, because he _can't_ read that smoothly and that well, and his letters _do_ look awful, and he spent that imaginary moment cowering behind Pike, hating Scanlan as much as he missed him.

"Oh, you know me, can't sleep a damn with a place like _that_ outside my front door. Were you writing?"

Grog glances around, hoping that someone might appear to take Scanlan off his hands. Like Vax. Vax seems pleased to have him around. But Vax—the dick—is nowhere to be found when you want to find him. Probably off looking for shit to get into, outside the safety of the mansion door. Almost fervently, Grog hopes that he _will_ find some shit. Then Grog can go save his ass, and not have to sit here and talk to Scanlan.

"You don't have to show me," Scanlan goes on. "I'm just impressed, is all." His eyes drift over to the salt lick rock, still holding down the other side of the parchment, the part that isn't folded.

Anger is familiar to Grog, an old friend. He knows it well enough to keep it from hurting him, or anyone else he doesn't want to hurt. But the flame of it licks up inside his ribs, and he nearly embraces it. He nearly _wants_ to hurt Scanlan. He's been fighting the confusion of that impulse ever since the disguise dissolved, revealing a man that stood about as small as Grog feels.

"Don't talk down to me," he says instead, which Pike says is a plainer way to say _condespend—condestand_? Well, that's why he knows _talk down_ , because he can never remember the con- _whatever_ one.

Scanlan peers up at him. "I'm not."

He says it earnestly, like a truth, but Scanlan says all things like that, even when he's lying. Maybe especially when he's lying. When Grog tries to name all the times Scanlan might've been lying, he gets a headache trying to keep track. It's _a lot_. Grog is aware that it's not so hard to fool him.

"Grog, do you know how many people can't read and write? It's not a common skill." Scanlan pauses, frowning. "You know, I was a poor kid. I didn't learn to read and write very early on, either."

Grog leans forward a little, despite himself. Despite his anger. "You're always good with words, though. That's your thing."

Scanlan gives a little shrug. "I learned to talk first, that's all. And I had help. I wasn't all that good before Dr. Dranzel picked me up. I was just performing to make money, you know? To take care of my mother. Lots of people will toss a coin to a poor kid."

Grog digests that a little. Scanlan hasn't talked about his mother, except that one conversation in a room smeared with old pudding, the one Grog sometimes remembers when he's trying to fall asleep and can't.

"Could she read?" Grog asks, despite himself—despite his anger—trying to do what Scanlan had both wanted them all to do, all that time, but also not _let_ them do. It's not fair. But Grog learned early that life isn't fair at all. He paid that lesson in blood.

Scanlan shakes his head. "She never learned."

They both stay quiet for a little while, after that. Grog—big, clumsy, dumb Grog—is afraid to say the wrong thing. Pissed as he still is at Scanlan, he doesn't want him to go away again. Maybe that means the anger's wearing off.

"I want to ask you something," he says instead, eventually.

It's funny, and also not really funny—not at all—the little flicker Scanlan gets in his eyeballs when Grog says that. It's funny because it's the look just-about-dead-people get sometimes, when Grog's bearing down on them. It's not funny because Scanlan is better at lying than that, so is _this_ a lie, too? Trying to practice writing has already given Grog a headache. This is just driving the nail deeper, trying to look all smart at Scanlan's words and actions like he might see the truth in there, under there, somewhere.

"Okay," Scanlan says, drawing out the _o_ s.

"Are you going to tell me the truth?" Just to check.

He puffs up a little. Angry, ashamed? Both? "I swear I will."

Grog twitches the parchment open again. It's just one line, every day. Pike says to go slow. He puts the salt lick rock down on one corner and turns the whole thing, slowly, toward Scanlan. After a bit of squinting, he finds the part he's looking for and jabs a finger at the word.

"Is this how you spell your name?"

Scanlan slumps a little, more of his fine clothes getting all full of sand. "Fucking hell, Grog."

"What?" Grog starts to regret this attempt at friendliness. "Is it wrong?"

"No, you just scared the piss out of me. I forgot how intimidating you are."

Grog sits up a little straighter, pleased by this. "Thanks."

Scanlan exhales loudly—a sound of relief—and looks at where Grog's pointing. "It's pretty close. S-c-a-n-l-a-n, not S-c-a-n-l-e-n. You didn't ask Pike?"

"She's mad at you," Grog says, telling it straight. "I didn't want to bring it up."

"You're mad at me, too. You practically dug a hole through the parchment on my name. _Scanlan came back today_ ," he reads aloud.

"I'm supposed to write a sentence," Grog explains. "Every day. I almost didn't, that day."

Scanlan's not the same since he came back. He used to never stop smiling. After everything that happened, after all the dragons were dead, Grog understands that that, too, was a lie. But without the constant smile, Scanlan looks much older, more serious. Kind of sad and faraway. It's a look Grog sees more on Percy and Vax. He _gets_ it, right, because Grog gets sad and messed up sometimes, too. Everybody has to. He just misses Scanlan. He doesn't have to have him all the time. Scanlan has Kaylie now. Things have changed a little. But just sometimes, it'd be good to have his buddy back.

"Well, I'm glad you did," Scanlan says. "I would've hated to mess up your streak. That's a lot of sentences."

Grog takes the quill, which miraculously still hasn't broken, and draws over the _e_ in Scanlan's name to make it an _a_. "There's a lot more, in the bag of holding. I still can't really count that high, so I don't know how many."

"That's great, Grog."

When Grog looks up from correcting the spelling, Scanlan's smiling. It's not the face-splitting grin of a year ago, but it looks…real. For the first time, this entire conversation, Grog believes that it's not a lie.

"Thanks," he says, kind of awkwardly, and to cover emotions he's uncomfortable with, he rushes on, "I'm trying to finish the sentence for today, but I can't think of the right word. I was going to say _people_?"

Scanlan reads along the last line. " _We killed some_ …right, they didn't really seem like _people_ , did they? More like _assholes_."

" _Assholes_ ," Grog repeats. "Yeah. That's better." He bends back over the parchment. " _A_ ," he mutters, half-forgetting Scanlan's there. " _s, s, h, o…_ "

He finishes the sentence, waves the parchment to dry the ink, and folds it up to tuck it back in the bag of holding.

"Hey," Scanlan says, "you hungry? Want to get a drink?"

Grog considers the hopeful look on Scanlan's face.

"Look," he says, "I don't really like that…green leafy crap you eat now, you know? I've got some jerky in the bag of holding," he adds, "if you want any. And ale."

Scanlan leans toward him. "I was kind of fucking with everyone. You can order whatever food you want. You don't have to eat the salad." He sighs, a little pinched around the eyes. "I know, I know. I lied. It's a force of habit."

Grog doesn't know what that means, exactly, but he barks a laugh, so sudden that Scanlan jumps, and says, "That's funny."

Scanlan's eyebrows quirk up. "Really?"

"Yeah, like, that's a funny lie, right? Especially now that you're telling me. Because the others are just going to keep eating leaves." Grog laughs again. Scanlan cracks a tentative smile. "So they'll bring meat? Not chicken," he adds hastily. "Because the cooks at Whitestone made this great thing, it's like a _bowl_ of _meat_ , like cow and pig and all that, and I've got kind of a hankering for it."

Scanlan gets up, brushing the sand off his clothes. "I'm sure the servants can make something like that. And, true to my word, I will have the salad." He winces a little.

Grog gets up, too, and nudges Scanlan with his boot. "Hey, you can have a bite when the servants aren't looking. I won't tell Kaylie."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

Scanlan grins, a wide smile from ages past, reminiscent of a long night at the bar, when the rest of Vox Machina have dropped off around them but they're nursing the dregs of their ale, trying to draw the night out to last forever. Grog remembers.

"Well then," Scanlan says. "Let's see what trouble we can get into."


End file.
